8 Steps To Recover Lost Rankings Due To Thin Content From Yoast Image Attachments

And How To Migrate To A Better WordPress SEO Plugin

Hey everyone, Chaz here with a roadmap for anyone trying to recover from the Yoast Image Attachment Bug or other potential thin content and Panda Penalty related issues.

I present an 8-step plan that you can quickly employee to mitigate any potential ranking losses and ensure a speedy and healthy recovery for the afflicted site.

But recovering from a Yoast Image penalty doesn’t stop at just mitigating the damage but also should involve a preventive measure as well. To this end, I show you how easy it is to migrate from the Yoast SEO plugin to SEOPress Pro. One-click migration of the important settings combined with some really amazing features makes this our preferred SEO plugin for WordPress and you can watch over my should as I deep-dive into all of the options and settings this plugin enables.

Advanced SEO And Optimization Posts

Optimizing For Quality And Trust

High Quality Pages, Best-Practice Technical Settings, And Trust Signals

I show you exactly what to look for in Search Console, and the exact steps I use to mitigate the filter. A Panda type of filter can be extremely stubborn but fortunately, if you keep in mind that it is all about presenting a quality site to Google’s crawlers, you can quickly find yourself on the road to recovering your lost rankings.

The 8 Steps I Use To Recover From A Thin Content Or Panda Penalty

See how I completely remove the low-quality pages or posts from Google’s index, and the exact steps I take to fix quality issues holding the site back.

Technical And Quality Settings For Rapid Recovery

Ensure the attachment setting is redirecting to the file:
This is easily accomplished in the Advanced settings of SEOPress Pro. The box titled: Redirect attachment pages to post parent (or homepage if none) needs to be checked to make sure the redirect is in place.

Mark existing indexed attachment pages as 410:
I show a simple htaccess 410 redirect that can be applied directly through the SEOPress Pro htaccess editor which will help purge any indexed thin content pages from Google’s index.

Remove attachment URLs in Search Console:
Get Google to recrawl these pages quicker to see the 410 gone status by requesting temporary removal via the Search Console. This will also help purge them from the index but is only temporary and should be combined with the 410 tactics above.

No index all other low-quality pages on the site:
Thin content recovery may require some extra steps to ensure the site is of high quality and convince Google it is worthy of inclusion and ranking in the SERPs.

Ensure that pagination is correct:
Often an overlooked problem that can be easily fixed with a single click in SEOPress Pro under Metas and Titles -> Advanced -> Add rel next/prev link in head of paginated archive pages.

Ensure any duplicate pages are canonicalized:
If you discover duplicate content that has been indexed or is nearly identical to other content, I recommend using canonical tags if it has been indexed rather than trying to force a no-index after the fact. Pay attention to any staging or sandbox sites to make sure they have not been mistakenly indexed!

Add trust pages to the site:
When trying to recover from a site quality issue or algorithmic filter it is a great idea to make the site appear as trustworthy as possible. Be sure an about, contact, privacy policy and terms of service page is present and easily crawled.

Add SSL if missing:
The hallmark of a high-quality and trusted site is having secure socket layer encryption installed and a quality issue recovery is a perfect time to add this if missing.

If you want to learn more about the Yoast SEO Plugin Bug or methods of fixing it you can check out these three great articles: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yoast-plugin-bug/255639/, https://www.seoblog.com/2018/04/wordpress-attachment-hurt-seo/, and https://yoast.com/media-attachment-urls/.

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Migrating From Yoast To SEOPress Pro Plugin

I demonstrate the ease with which the migration happens, one click to import your Yoast settings for index, follow, meta description, and meta title. Then I deep dive into the advanced configurations of our new favorite SEO Plugin for WordPress which we are using in our white label SEO campaigns and on-page optimization service.

Basic Settings And Advanced Features Of The SEOPress Pro Plugin

1 Click Migration of Important Yoast Settings
Simple and easy migration of your follow/no follow, index, focus keywords, meta descriptions, and meta titles from Yoast.

TITLES & METAS:
Single Posts Page

For most sites, the default settings will work just fine and I would caution against changing anything.
Archives

I no index, no follow, or disable most archives for the vast majority of sites, only under rare conditions would I selectivley not do this.
Taxonomies

When it comes to categories and tags every site will be different for what is appropriate. Most of the time I no index and no follow tags, usually, I will no index categories except for eCommerce sites which I do not. But how you deal with categories will be dependant on the type of site you are optimizing.
Advanced

Here is where you would no index a development or sandbox site, and correctly set your paginated content by checking the box titled: Add rel next/prev link in head of paginated archive pages.

XML / IMAGE / HTML SITEMAP:
General

I like to enable the XML, image, and video sitemaps. I do not use the HTML sitemaps because I like to be able to choose which anchor text is used for the pages. You can also manually ping Google which is a cool feature.
Post Types

Here I include the pages, posts, images, and products if it is an eCom site.
Taxonomies

I usually do not include taxonomies in the sitemap unless it is an ecom site then I will include the product categories.
HTML Sitemap

I like to manually code my own HTML sitemap, so I do not use this feature.

SOCIAL NETWORKS:
Knowledge Graph

Completely fill this out for the website, it is important.
Your social accounts

List your brand’s social accounts here to begin tying together your entity.
Facebook

Here I enable OG data and specify a photo to be used for Facebook shares.
Twitter

Here I enable Twitter cards and also specify and sharing photo.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS:
General

Here you can enable Google Analytics and also GDPR compliance.
Tracking

You can enable remarketing, anonymization, and other tracking features.
Events

You can track many events easily through this tab.
Custom Dimensions

Custom dimensions and custom metrics are like default dimensions and metrics in your Analytics account.
Stats

Connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics API and get statistics right in your Dashboard.

ADVANCED:
Advanced

The two most important fields are: redirect attachment pages to post parent and Google site verification. Ensure the first is checked and make sure the site is verified in Search Console.
Appearance

Here you can choose to display additional information in the posts and pages overview pages. I like to check display noindex status so I can easily see at a glance which pages are noindexed and which aren’t.
Security

Through this tab, you can block access to certain plugin features based on various user roles.

TOOLS:
Export and Import Settings

Allows you to easily create templated SEO settings that can quickly be deployed to similar sites making set-up fast for production environments.
Export and Import Redirections

Another handy feature is the ability to quickly transfer redirections which makes it easy to migrate from a standalone redirection plugin to the built-in redirection feature.
Migrate from Yoast

Quickly move your page and post metadata from Yoast to SEOPress with 1 click ease.

SEOPRESS BOT:
Broken Link Scan

A great built-in feature that scans your site for broken links.

SEOPRESS PRO:
Local Business Schema

Extremely convenient for single location local sites, though it will not work for multi-location sites.

Dublin Core

I enable this to easily create Dublin core meta tags.

Structured Data

I like to add Structured Data Types support, mark your content
and get better Google Search Results appearance.

Breadcrumbs

The plugin allows you to configure your Breadcrumbs, for most sites I will enable Breadcrumbs.

WooCommerce

Built-in compatibility will allow you to easily no index thin content Woo pages like the customer account and cart. Just a word of caution, if you use 1 page check-out do not no index your cart or checkout page using this plugin.

Easy Digital Downloads

Built-in compatibility with easy digital downloads helps ensure the best SEO settings when using this plugin.

Page Speed

A built-in page speed analyzer that also provides you with specific recommendations to help increase your site speed.

robots.txt

Create and optimize your robots.txt file right inside your SEO plugin.

Google News

Great for any site trying to become a Google News publisher, this specialty sitemap will increase the liklihood of being accepted and having your news appear in Google.

404

One of my favorite features, I enable 404 monitoring, delete 404’s after 30 days, and automatically redirect 404 errors to the home page.

htaccess

Conveniently edit your htaccess file when necessary.

RSS

Modify and tweak your RSS settings. You might need to do this if you use RSS to syndicate to an IFTTT network.

Backlinks

SEOPress Pro connects to majestic to allow you to monitor your backlinks.

URL Rewriting

Easily create a custom URL structure for your site with this feature. I would rarely use this.

Redirections

Internal 301 redirects should be a single redirect between an old page and a new page and should avoid any type of double redirect or redirect loop.